Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 Review

Stranger Things returns with a surprising steadiness, a confidence earned through years of experimentation and excess, and yet Volume 1 feels more intimate than anything the show has delivered since its early days.

There is a deliberate narrowing of focus: Hawkins becomes a pressure chamber, the Upside Down folds inward like a living organism barricading itself, and the cast, now undeniably older, settle into versions of their characters that feel less like teenagers on bicycles and more like veterans of a war they never volunteered for. Instead of fighting this maturation, the season embraces it, crafting a tone that is darker, more reflective, and often deeply emotional.

The heartbeat of this Volume is unquestionably Will Byers, and for the first time since the show’s debut, the story allows him to stand at the very center rather than the periphery. His connection to Vecna evolves from a haunting vestige to something visceral, volatile, and strangely empowering. The sequences where Will slips into the hive consciousness are some of the most striking in the series, not simply because of the horror or the spectacle, but because they reframe seven years of narrative breadcrumbs into a single, coherent thread.

His eventual unleashing of power; a moment staged with operatic tension and brutal elegance; feels like the rightful culmination of his long-suppressed arc, and the show wisely leans into the ambiguity of this awakening: is he resisting Vecna, or unknowingly fulfilling the villain’s plan?

What makes this season particularly satisfying is the way it balances this heavy mythology with moments of genuine character connection. Robin’s gentle conversation with Will, filtered through the lens of her own journey, becomes the emotional hinge upon which the entire Volume turns. Eleven and Hopper share scenes that, while familiar in their dynamic, gain poignancy from the years of grief, sacrifice, and reconciliation between them. Hopper himself, often criticized for stagnating in recent seasons, is finally given material that reconnects him to the emotional gravity that once defined him, grounding the larger supernatural chaos in something recognizably human.

Max’s storyline offers the season its most haunting detour. Suspended inside Vecna’s psychic labyrinth, navigating memories twisted into mythic landscapes, she becomes a kind of tragic wanderer, surviving in the shadows of a world built to break her. Her interactions with Holly add an unexpectedly tender fairytale quality, transforming these sequences from mere lore expansion into something symbolic and strangely hopeful.

Visually and structurally, the season operates with a cinematic patience. Each episode flows into the next like chapters of a single film, giving the story room to breathe even during sequences filled with gunfire, monsters, and collapsing realities. The homage to Children of Men during the military rescue stands out not as cheap mimicry but as a confident stylistic flex, executed with enough emotional weight to justify the reference.

Even the show’s occasional missteps: a poorly timed joke, a subplot that treads familiar ground etc.; cannot dim the sense that the Duffers have rediscovered the tonal harmony that made Stranger Things such a phenomenon in the first place.

In the end, Volume 1 succeeds not because it recaptures the innocence of the early seasons, but because it respects the fact that these characters have long outgrown it. It leans into their scars, their burdens, and their evolution, while still finding space for wonder, for terror, and for the fragile threads of family and friendship that have always anchored the series. It is a story facing its final descent, but doing so with clarity, energy, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Stranger Things is no longer a show about kids fighting monsters.
It is now a story about survivors confronting the versions of themselves that the darkness helped shape and Volume 1 proves there is still something powerful left to say before the lights finally go out.